Friday, February 06, 2009

What's the WORST job you ever had?

There were some interesting answers: haying, milking cows at 4:00 a.m., washing dishes.

There was a Catholic sister I knew who travelled to another city incognito to experience life as a homeless person.

A "gospel" mission had her washing dishes before letting her sleep on the greasy kitchen floor.

Most of the folks we were talking with tonight agreed that the day labor opportunities weren't too great. They treat you mean, and charge you for everything; getting to the job site, cashing your check for you at the end of the day. They take half the money that the employer pays out, right off the top. You work all day, and get to go home to your tent to rest up.

My worst job was editing for a Christian book publishing house. The owners were "spirit-filled" (i.e., several steps beyond charismatic) and hired church friends, regardless of whether or not they knew a comma from a colon. They didn't know what in the world to do with me, a cranky Calvinist.

I refused to attend the company's weekly devotions after they became a chance for a new hire's opportunity to lay hands on each of us in turn and prophecy about each of us. Oh, pleeeze!

I thanked God that I was layed off after about three months. Later I heard that the couple divorced when the wife began following someone who emphasized leaving family behind in order to follow Christ completely.

Rock crushing plant--in the 1980's. Stood all day on a re-bar grid at the top of a six story open tower--no safety rails--pulling the larger boulders, by hand, from a flowing stream of smaller boulders as they dropped from a conveyor belt to the very re-bar grid I had to stand on all day.

The city where I found myself broke and homeless put me up in a room; this was the job they sent me on to pay the bill. Hourly wage worked out to two dollars an hour--that is, if I'd been paid in cash instead of given a room.